What a mess (s)he created on a Monday morning bright and early with my email contact lists. Like I had nothing to do on a Monday morning!

I apologize to those who received an email allegedly from me stating there was an attachment for you to review documents. This email wanted you to click on a link and open the documents and review them. However, once you entered your email address and your password, the hacker began to literally suck your contact list and user groups, like me, and left them empty.

It then sent out emails to all those addresses it took and sent messages, and so on and so on, until the ugly trail of missing information was miles long.

The problem lay in the email I received. A trusted source, so I thought. People are always sending us documents and photos to use for the Herald-Dispatch. This process is a weekly occurrence... The nail in the coffin is that we have become accustom to receiving photos and documents in such a way. It is to make the process easier to send and receive. Our corporate office sends us documents this way all the time.

That is what the hacker is playing on. The fact that we have received information via this method time and time again, recognizing the name of the sender made us a sitting duck just waiting to be picked off in one quick key stroke.

If there is a lesson to be learned from all of this, it is to back up your contact list at least monthly. Or more often if you are obsessive. Even if you are familiar with the sender but the method in which they are asking you to retrieve the information is now different, a 30 second phone call is much better than the hours of cure it takes to fix the problem. Don’t be hacked, instead hit delete!

Thought for the week: Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. – Emily Dickinson.